Nvidia and global alternative asset manager Brookfield have decided to invest a total of $10 billion (about 14.6 trillion won) in Naver. Naver plans to use this as a springboard to expand its gigawatt-scale artificial intelligence (AI) factory business into global markets.

Naver board chairman Lee Hae-jin (이해진) attended the "AI San Francisco Summit" hosted by President Lee Jae-myung (이재명) in San Francisco on July 24 local time and said, "Nvidia and Brookfield have decided to invest $10 billion in Naver."

Lee said, "This investment will be an opportunity for a big change as Naver makes a leap to a new stage." He added, "Not only the capital provided by the two companies, but also their global brands and networks will be a big opportunity to expand Naver's know-how."

Lee explained that over the past 30 years, Naver has developed and operated internet services such as search, commerce and content directly between U.S. and Chinese big tech companies. He added that in the process it designed and built data centres itself, accumulating related technology and operational know-how.

Lee said there were limits in capital and global business networks when expanding this to global markets. The investment is expected to ease those limits and support funding and overseas expansion for the gigawatt-scale AI factory project Naver has pursued.

Naver previously unveiled plans last month with Nvidia to build a 1-gigawatt global AI factory. The plan is to start operations in the first half of 2027 at a scale of 55 megawatts, expand to 100 megawatts in the same year and then to 200 megawatts by 2028, before expanding in the long term to the gigawatt level.

Brookfield is an asset manager with strengths in large-scale real-asset infrastructure investment such as data centres and power and renewable energy. It operates a global AI infrastructure investment programme with Nvidia of up to $100 billion. Brookfield's capital and infrastructure investment capabilities are expected to support Naver's AI factory construction and overseas expansion.

Lee and Naver executives including CEO Choi Soo-yeon (최수연), Chief Financial Officer Kim Hee-cheol (김희철) and Naver Cloud CEO Kim Yu-won (김유원) visited Nvidia's Endeavor building in Santa Clara, California, and met Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (젠슨 황) and others to reaffirm their willingness to cooperate to expand the global AI factory business.

Huang met President Lee separately in San Francisco that day and introduced plans for cooperation with Naver. Huang said, "As you know, Naver is a leading cloud company in South Korea," and added, "Through the partnership, we plan to support not only expansion in South Korea but also global expansion."

Lee also set out a plan to use the investment as an opportunity to strengthen efforts to build an ecosystem in which diverse AI coexists without being dependent on a specific big tech company.

He said, "The internet world Naver dreams of is not one in which the internet and AI are dominated and manipulated by one or two groups," and added, "To protect the world's diversity, various AIs for each country, group and individual must be able to emerge and operate."